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| 9/16/2009 10:01:00 AM Email this article • Print this article |
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Mark Cordano, interim dean of the Ithaca College School of Business, will give a presentation Thursday for members of the Sustainable Enterprise Network. (Photo by Rachel Philipson) |
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Sustainable Tompkins launches network of environmentally-friendly businesses
Taryn Thompson
Reporter
Sustainable Tompkins is launching the Sustainable Enterprise Network, a network of like-minded and independent businesses in the area that promotes socially and environmentally friendly management practices.
Intended to become the platform for the Green Resource Hub, the idea behind the SEN is to develop and implement strategies that different enterprises - small businesses, government entities - could use and adopt.
"In the realm of sustainability, this means community operations, innovative ways of collaborating and finding ways to purchase green," said Scott Hamilton, the chair of the committee for implementing the SEN.
"We are working to create a platform from which the SEN can have a team of people developing these strategies and working behind the social network and getting these relationships to happen, opening communication lines," Hamilton said.
The Hub is a non-profit organization and affiliate of Sustainable Tompkins that aims to expand the regional marketplace for sustainable living through business support services and consumer education on green building, energy efficiency, renewable energy and green purchasing.
The SEN plans to have monthly presentations and workshops focused on how local businesses can achieve success while maintaining integrity. The first is Thursday, Sept. 17, featuring a presentation from Mark Cordano, Interim Dean of the IC School of Business, who teaches strategic management, business and society, environmental management, organizational behavior and human resources.
Cordano has been doing research since the early 1990s, looking at what causes businesses to adopt green practices.
"What has changed over time is that it used to be unusual for a business to incorporate green practices, and now it has become the norm for some companies and in some industries," Cordano said.
"So I started looking at smaller businesses to see what they were doing," he added. "What was happening in small businesses was that even if they wanted to make changes, they didn't have resources - either the time, knowledge or money."
Cordano received his PhD in Strategy, Business Environment and Organizations from the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh and studied environmental attitudes and environmental management behavior.
"One of the things I've been thinking about is how a collection of small businesses that want to promote green efforts could organize a non-profit that could funnel money from development corporations, state governments and grant foundations to bring in the resources they'd all share," Cordano said. "A larger firm can go out and hire an organizational entity and can afford it. These small businesses can't."
They would therefore share resources regarding such things as policy writing skills and public-private partnerships or equitable business practices.
"The critical issue is on which things [to] cooperate and on which things [to] compete," Cordano said. "But these companies want to grow the green consumer, so they have to share and have to be specific in that conversation, regarding how it can mutually benefit all of us."
The panel discussion will also include a guest appearance by Jean and Edward Stead, professors at East Tennessee State University, who co-authored a newly-released book on strategic decision making and the environment.
The Steads's research focuses on community sustainability, evaluating business practices, ethics and values and the ever-changing attitudes toward the environment and sustainability.
The discussion will explore strategies businesses can employ to further sustainability while boosting financial profitability, including public-private partnerships for small business, cooperative marketing and resource sharing.
Panelists will share new ideas on organizational development for sustainable enterprise, presenting a new model for business based on strategic decision making framework that will aid in achieving long-term economic success in the face of current ecological concerns.
"The goal in presenting the Steads is to reach an audience of self-starters and small business owners," Hamilton said. "The SEN will work on a social networking media platform, in essence working very closely with institutions like the Ithaca College School of Business."
Hamilton added that one of the Steads's foci is on non-profits who are not financially independent and "what they can do to essentially achieve the value purchase instead of the need purchase, because of cost considerations," he said.
This addresses the conflict of committing to sustainable practices when the financial investment is too costly.
"But there are a lot of requirements that are involved in defining sustainability and enterprise, especially when you're using social media as your format," he added.
"If [a small business owner] can find the right strategies and collaborative measures with other small businesses or a public entity like the Hub, we expand the availability or access to a value purchase," Hamilton said.
Membership with the SEN will help support the growth of these options.
"There's a priority set with spending, for any business, but it is much tighter for a smaller business or new business," he said. "The theory side is [that] we're all facing a lot of challenges, and we're all committed to how can we start on that small level [using] simple tools that can allow us to work together."
Hamilton said it brings in the triple bottom line: the community, the environment and the costs.
"It incorporates social justice and considering the community of the stakeholder," he said.
The presentation is sponsored by the Green Resource Hub from 5-7:30 p.m. tomorrow at the Tower Club at Ithaca College. This installment of SEN events will begin with an opportunity to network with area businesses owners. To register or for more information, go to greenresourcehub.org.
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Suicide has recently come to Ithaca in a very public, and at times controversial, way. This past academic year, after three years with no suicides, Cornell experienced what is known in the scientific community as a "suicide cluster." OK, so maybe you're like me and you thought this whole JetBlue flight attendant story was good for maybe one news cycle.  |
